by Tim Hughes | @Timothy_Hughes | LinkedIn
We often get invited into companies and this conversation takes place:-
- Prospect: We purchased LinkedIn Sales Navigator. LinkedIn did this amazing presentation and how it would transform our sales process.
- Us: That’s amazing, what happen?
- Prospect: Nothing.
- Us: What do you mean?
- Prospect: Well nothing, all those promises from LinkedIn were empty, we have been asked by the CFO to throw it out.
So how did it come to this? Linkedin Sales Navigator IS the best sales tool on the market, it, if you look at it from a value prospective its cheap, for what it is. So how do people seem to experience Sales Navigator as a white elephant?
Let’s take a step back.
Sales Navigator is like a Porsche 911, I’ve never driven one and I’m sure I would crash it, if I did. Think about it, you give a 911 to all of your sales team. 20% would love it, they are probably competent drivers already, but if you trained them using a programmatic approach they would get better.
60% would be unsure, they might not like the manual gear shift, would be concerned about the rear wheel drive, they might drive it a bit. They might drive it and give up. These people will need a lot of instruction to get over their fear.
And finally 20% wouldn’t be interested. It’s not for them, they are happy on the bus, they might not even have a driving licence.
Now regardless of where they are not the chart you would’t just throw them a manual to tell them to read it. They wouldn’t. You could get them to watch a webinar. They won’t. We are too busy doing email, eating our lunch and we all know nothing of important is given out over a webinar.
If you wanted to learn how to drive a high performance racing car you would get somebody from outside the company to show you. Not sit there and tell you which buttons to press, that is knowledge based training. You would get somebody in, a trained driver, with a clear track record and coaching and mentoring people in 911s. Show them what to do when there was a skid. How to corner so the car does not spin.
The mistake everybody makes with sales navigator they think that they can give the tool to sales people and they just transform. They also think the LinkedIn Computer Based Training (CBT) will meet your requirements. It won’t.
You cannot teach a child to ride a bike via computer based training and you certainly cannot teach people to drive a high performance tool through computer based training.
What has this got to do with sales navigator?
Sales Navigator is the tool, as with any IT project, you also need to take into account the people and the process.
To use Sales Navigator, you first need to be Social. You need to understand and have a personal brand on LinkedIn. This is a profile that shows what a great salesman you are, but the profile your customer would like you to look like. Let’s not forget that nobody gets up in the morning and says “the first thing I want to do is talk to a salesperson”. In fact the great thing about social is you can go on and search for products and services in salesperson avoidance mode.
It often cones as a surprise too many people that social isn’t for selling. Social will get you leads and meetings, not by selling, but being the expert your customer wants to deal with.
Customers want to build a relationship with somebody who can help them. Somebody who has a relevance to them and their industry. Somebody who isn’t “just another salesperson”. They also want a relationship with somebody who is human like them.
Not the “hey we went to the same university, now can I sell you some shit” which people taught for social selling in 2015. We’ll I’ve just read a social selling book now in 2019 and he still recommends it, I think most people recognise this as spam.
The Business Case for Sales Nav
Sales Navigator is by far the best sales tool any company can have in its armoury. But, sorry, just throwing the keys at the sales team and hoping it will work, won’t work.
Sales Nav will get you, at least one extra lead or meeting a week. It should do a lot more, but let’s start small, it would be wrong to promise a rose garden. If you win one in four deals, that is an extra 10 deals per year. (I’ve taken a conservative figure of only 10 months to take into account vacation, Christmas and Easter, which can be slow months).
10 extra deals a year multiplied by you average deal size multiplied by you number of salespeople.
So 10 deals x $100K X 10 salespeople = 10 Million …. don’t forget you will be doing the execution, you will be driving the Porsche.
Let’s assume only will only get 20% of this, you are still getting an additional $2 Million in revenue.
You can play with the figures, based on your own maths.
Let me reiterate, you won’t get this by just handing the software to your sales team and doing the LinkedIn CBT Training, you must have a programmatic social selling program to back it up.
Getting a LinkedIn Project Back on Track?
Now it is possible to get a LinkedIn project back on track, our recommendation is you use a known Linkedin expert. You can spot on, not because they have it written on their LinkedIn profile, but they have actual proof.
Here are some videos from Alex Low our head of professional services.
People who read this article also read these:
https://dlaignite.com/why-a-social-strategy-is-a-key-to-your-success/
https://dlaignite.com/why-your-cold-calling-day-wont-save-you-from-your-slow-demise-into-irrelevance/
https://dlaignite.com/but-youre-not-telling-me-anything-i-dont-already-knowas-everyone-says/
